The period covered by this section
starts in roughly the 1170s and continues through to the early
C14th, a period of 150 years or so in which ceramic production
seems to be dominated by the output of Kashan, a city in
north-west Iran just south of Tehran and Qumm. (see map) This is
a period of turbulent political events, dominated by first the
Saljuqs (1025-1220s) and then the Mongols leading to rule by the
Ilkhanid dynasty until c.1350. We have already seen how the
Saljuqs took over from the Ghaznavids in Khurasan, where Nishapur
was their capital city, (see A:\history.htm#Ghaznavids), however
a more general look at the effect on Persia as a whole is
interesting here, especially when we come to section 5 and see
how the Kashani workshops flourished throughout this period,
seemingly untouched by political events.

From 1025 onwards the Saljuqs, who
came from the other side of the river Oxus from Khurasan, were
moving into former Ghaznavid and Buyid territories as those
dynasties were weakening their control over them. In 1055 they
had taken Baghdad, in 1071 they took Jerusalem, Damascus in 1076:
they also penetrated into the heart of Anatolia, by destroying a
Byzantine army at Manzikert on Lake Van in 1071. These "Rum
Saljuqs" later become cut off from the Saljuqs in the east
and developing in isolation they give rise to the Ottomans. The
Saljuqs were already Muslims, and strictly Sunni, and these
incursions into the Mediterranean by such a powerful Islamic army
sparked off the Crusades. Their religion also meant, however,
that they had no difficulty assimilating their own culture with
that of the lands they were now ruling, and they especially took
to Persian cultural life, adopting Persian as their official
language and even taking Persian heroic names for their own.

The Saljuq empire which now
extended from the Oxus to the Mediterranean, and down into the
Punjab, was firmly established by Alp Arslan (1063-72), and was
consolidated by Malik-Shah (1072-92) wisely advised by his vizier
Nizam al-Mulk (1018-92). There were internal struggles over the
succession in 1092, when Malik-Shah and Nizam al-Milk (who was
murdered by Ismaili Assassins) both died and left a power
vacuum; the main religious difficulties arose from the extreme
Ismaili sects led by Hassan-i Sabbah (The Old Man of the
Mountain, d. 1124), however they retreated to remote fortified
places like Alamut, north-west of Tehran, and later are replaced
altogether by the more moderate Twelver Shiis; Sufi
mysticism is also on the rise in this period, and the two most
famous medieval mystics lived under the Saljuqs: al-Ghazali
(1058-1111) and Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-73) (his epithet is
"Rumi" as he lived among the Rum Saljuqs of Anatolia).

There were some secessions from
the Saljuqs in the West where dynasties such as the Ayyubids
(Egypt and Syria) and Artukids (Northern Syria) established
themselves; however, this was a period of great stability and
material prosperity for the people of the eastern Islamic lands,
in which the arts and sciences flourished, until the very end of
the C12th. Even then the political events probably had no great
impact on the lives of ordinary people, as the Khwarazm-Shah,
Muhammad II, succeeded peacefully to the Saljuq throne in 1194.

The greatest change occurred with
the coming of the Mongols in
the early C13th. This was another nomadic tribal people from
north of the Oxus, who had coalesced into a pillaging horde under
the sovereignty of Chingiz Khan, elected supreme lord of the
Mongols c.1206. In 1215 he had wrested the government of China
from the hands of the ruling dynasty of Jurchen, and was provoked
in to turning his attentions westwards by the assassination of
some of his spies by the Khwarazm-Shah, Muhammad II. However,
Muhammad had no strength to match the Mongol invaders, especially
as many of the Turks in his own army deserted to join Turks in
the Mongol armies. Thus in 1220-1 Chingiz Khan rampaged over
northern Persia, taking in Samarqand, Bukhara and some of the
most important cities that ever flourished in the Islamic world.

Whereas the occupation by the
Saljuqs had been relatively peaceful, entailing a change of ruler
who was of the same religious group as his subjects, the Mongols
have become legendary for their acts of devastation. As we have
seen in the Nishapur section, this great city was destroyed and
left to decline by the Mongols; another city to suffer was
Baghdad, which fell in 1258 and was plundered for several days.
The incumbent caliph (al-Mustasim since 1242) was executed,
thus bringing an abrupt end to the Abbasids who had ruled
as religious leaders of Islam since 750, five centuries before,
though their political power had been almost nil since the C10th.
Thereafter Baghdad sank rapidly to the level of a provincial
town, never to recover its former splendour.

Chingiz Khan died in 1227, but his
successors continued his policies towards China and the West,
taking in Russia in 1236-41 and Saljuq Anatolia in 1243; on 1
January 1256, Hülegü Khan crossed the Oxus at the head of
129,000 soldiers and occupied the plateau of northern Persian
without resistance. The Mongols were not Muslims, and were only
nominally Buddhist, but their policies of religious intolerance
were only mollified by the patronage of Hülegüs wife
towards Nestorians, and of the scholar Nasir al-Din Tusi
(d.1274), the rulers advisor and astronomer, towards
Shiis; the Sunnis who had flourished under the Saljuqs now
found themselves persecuted.

However, Hülegü went back to
Central Asia at end of 1259 to elect a new Great Khan on the
death of his brother, and the Mamluks in Egypt took this
opportunity to hit back. Theirs was the only army capable of
meeting the Mongols on equal terms, since both armies were
essentially composed of Turks and Caucasians, and used the same
fighting methods. In September 1260, the Mongols were defeated
for the first time, at Ayn Jalut, north of Jerusalem, and
thereafter they withdrew from Syria. Mamluk Egypt thus became the
new centre of refuge for Muslims, especially Sunnis, escaping
religious persecution.

Hülegü died in 1265, and was
succeeded in Persia by the Il-Khans (= "viceroys")
though struggles for power lasted until 1295, when Ghazan (aged
24) came to power, and under the guidance of his physician Rashid
al-Din, he converted to Sunni Islam in an effort to bring peace.
This was signal for other Mongols to do likewise. Ghazan also
tried to initiate reforms to encourage internal stability but he
did not live long enough (he died in 1304), and it was left to
his brother Öljaytü, also guided by Rashid al-Din, to stabilise
conditions. This ruler sparked off a period of intense building
work, erecting a new capital city at Sultaniyya, west of Qazvin;
he became Shii in 1310, acknowledging the growing
importance in this area of this religious movement. However,
Öljaytü also died soon, in 1316, to be succeeded by his 12 year
old son (Abu Said). This paved the way for decline: Rashid
al-Din was executed in 1318; the internal stability of the
Ilkhanids was shattered by palace intrigues, popular revolts,
tribal feuds, and ethnic antagonism between the Persians on the
one hand, and Turks and Mongols on the other; several states
seceded from the Mongols; Abu Said died in 1335, and there
followed 18 years of civil war, until the last of Ilkhanids just
disappeared  the sources dont even tell us what
happened to him.

While this was a period of
turbulent political struggles, the Mongol invasions and
devastations were possibly the only thing to have impacted
directly on the lives of ordinary men and women of the Central
Islamic lands. This period as a whole is remarkable for the
technical developments that occur in ceramics, as we shall see in
the next section, and also for the flourishing of the arts,
sciences, philosophy and religious thinking. It is also a period
when the Islamic world is linked directly with China through the
rule of the Mongols which extends over both civilisations: this
bond is manifested in the arts through the gradual change from an
abstract or stylised arabesque form of vegetal decoration, to a
more naturalistic representation, and especially through the
introduction into Islamic art of distinctively Chinese forms such
as the lotus flower, and figural motifs such as dragons and
winged phoenixes. This continues with added vigour during the
rule of the Timurids, and has a profound influence on Ottoman
art, especially in the beautiful ceramics of Iznik. These
developments will be called to attention where relevant in the
ensuing chapters.

[Please note that a really
easy-to-read book that will introduce you painlessly yet
accurately to the history of this region in this period is Samarqand
by Amin Maalouf. The first half is really the only relevant
bit, as the second half deals with C19th Persia. It is
essentially a historical novel on the life of Omar Khayyam,
author of the famous Rubaiyat, but incorporates
interesting chapters on Nizam al-Mulk and Hassan-i Sabbah, leader
of the Assassins.]